14 ADDRESS. 



the condition of the English system of labor, which is far supe- 

 rior to many of the systems of nations on the continent of Europe. 

 To say nothing of the intellectual and social and moral condition of 

 such men, how fearful is the physical. Eor these men, for their 

 children and their children's children, there is little hope, except 

 from the rays of light thrown across the trackless Atlantic by 

 our American labor which is struggling still for complete eman- 

 cipation from the tyrannical hands of aristocracy, monopoly and 

 capital. 



You need no statement from me of the condition of the Amer- 

 ican laborer to enable you to compare the one with the other. Our 

 laborer, with equal rights with all other men, at the ballot box, in 

 the school room, in the halls of legislation, in the chair of state, 

 in the learned professions, in the mechanic arts, every where, 

 he may rise or fall as his own energy, ambition, industry and 

 prudence are developed. It is upon his own and not another's 

 will that his success depends. 



I have spoken briefly upon this great question of nationalized 

 labor in America. If I have succeeded in convincing you that 

 American labor has always, and will hereafter always, depend 

 upon the recognition of manhood, I have not failed in my pur- 

 pose. This has been the secret of our success as a nation. And 

 so long as we continue to keep capital subservient to labor, so 

 long will we preserve the peculiar characteristics which cluster 

 around and adorn our American labor. But when capital, if it 

 ever shall, gets the mastery of labor ; when birth and ancestry 

 become of more account than the man, then farewell to the rich 

 growth of American civilization and farewell to the great princi- 

 ples of our government which have enabled it to be an asylum 

 to the oppressed of all nations. 



